The amazingly unlikely true story of how a grumpy old man and lifelong bachelor won the love of a beautiful young woman and started a family – and all by writing a curmudgeonly blog about his lonely journey to the grave.

Now who would have predicted that?

Wednesday, 22 April 2009

Dreams and the nightmare of work

14st 10lb, 5.0 units. The most exciting feature of my life at present seems to be my dreams. Last night’s included the field outside my house in Northumberland being turned into a major construction site – by no means impossible these days, I suppose, given that Government and Opposition seem to be united in their crazed enthusiasm for turning our remaining unspoilt uplands into industrial sites filled with hopelessly inefficient and unreliable windmills. Though in this instance the work in question appeared to involve laying out a lovely new housing estate, which seems altogether less likely so far out in the middle of nowhere.

Then I was taking my dog for a walk in the country, and ran into a group of Americans who appeared to be lost. It had to be a dream because I cheerfully gave them some accurate and helpful directions, which is never likely to happen in real life. It was the same in the days when I was young enough to have nocturnal fantasies about sex; I always knew it was a dream when the woman involved seemed to be actually enjoying herself. The dog and I ended up walking through an apparently endless series of rooms in an old-fashioned pub or hotel, looking for a rear exit that would provide a useful short cut. And then finding, as one might have expected, that it did not actually exist. I took this for an allegory of some sort, though I could not decide whether it was warning me about constipation or the inadvisability of sexual perversion. No doubt time will tell.

This morning I somehow found myself drawn ineluctably into the Susan Boyle fan site on Facebook (which has over 1.5 million members) and wasted some time reading the almost endless stream of fatuous comments, interspersed with occasional vicious ones dwelling upon her physically peculiarities and gracelessly wishing her dead. There is clearly much to be said for not being a star, though the 93-year-old Ernest Borgnine on today’s Midweek sounded remarkably spry on it, and it presumably beats actually working for a living. Not that I can remember too much about that, though I fear it is something I am going to have to re-learn before I am too much older.

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About Me

Keith Hann is a serial quitter: professionally as a historian (the last days of the British Empire), then an investment analyst (the last days of the British food industry) and finally as a financial public relations consultant (the last days of pretty much any company that was deluded enough to hire him). In each case he packed it in just when there might have been some chance of making a few quid out of it. Then there is his personal life score: engagements 4, marriages 1. For the last few years Keith has been indulging himself as a hobby journalist. It seems unlikely that he will ever make a living out of this. And if he ever shows signs of making it Big, his resignation will be going straight into the post. In November 2007 Keith started blogging (a) to take the mickey out of the genre, (b) because a misguided friend told him that it was the ideal way to secure his Big Break as a writer, and (c) to chronicle the final days of a dying breed of solitary English curmudgeon. Nothing remarkable about any of that, except that it somehow convinced a beautiful, funny young woman that she had finally met the man of her dreams. As we always say Up North, there’s nowt so queer as folk.